Chapter 18 Oblivion #4
He looked up to find Sabine staring at him.
"Why did you show me this?" Kit asked.
Sabine steepled her hands. "She’s moved on. Does that upset you? Your Soulbond, touching another. Someone you both knew, no less." Her voice was precise and cool.
Right. Kit remembered that. They didn’t know Lucien was her Soulbond, too.
Kit forced anguish onto his face. It wasn’t difficult. "She never loved me anyway," he said. "We were doomed from the start."
He placed the photo on the coffee table, unable to see her face here, among these lifeless, cold walls.
Rin didn’t belong here.
Sabine regarded him with calculation. "I am sorry, you know, that it had to come to this. But your love for her will be your demise."
Kit didn’t speak after that, even as Sabine talked lowly about their next steps, remarking how far he’d come in his healing.
Rin’s face flashed behind his lids with every blink. If it weren’t for her, he would kill himself, he realized. The only thing keeping him from doing it was her, the thought of her out there, waiting for him—grieving him.
Sabine thought she was turning Kit against Rin with the photo, but it only brought Kit such an utter sense of peace to know his Soulbond was being cared for. Maybe Rin was better off without him.
That night, Kit bundled up the thin sheet on the bed, turning it into a rope in his fists. He tugged it between his two hands, and the prosthetic whirred faintly as he did so.
How easily could this be a noose...
He squeezed his eyes shut—and saw Rin’s face staring at him.
Kit put the sheet back on the bed, curling up beneath it.
"You’re ready for the next stage," said the doctor.
Kit had been poked and prodded by so many that their faces blurred, but this doctor was somewhat familiar to him. He had dark hair, faint lines of age on his face, and a distant, detached stare. Kit guessed this doctor had seen him more often than the others.
Electrodes were stuck to his temples, hooked to a monitor to check his brain activity. He closed his eyes and heard the beeping.
The doctor pressed his hands on Kit’s temples, then down, checking his heart and vitals with a circular object. When it was passed over Kit’s body, it hummed faintly.
"Yes, I’d say we can get started—now."
Terror welled. Kit opened his eyes.
"Now?" he rasped, turning his head on the examination table to stare at the doctor.
The doctor’s clinical stare focused on Kit. "Yes. It’s time for stage three."
Kit made to push off the bed. No buckles or bindings this time.
He’d become too complacent. The floor was cold against his bare feet as he pushed himself up to a stand.
He towered over the doctor, who sat unperturbed in a rolling chair next to a computer.
The screen showed an image of Kit’s body, zeroed in on his brain.
"That won’t be necessary," said the doctor.
Kit’s brows furrowed. "What—"
The doctor lifted a gas mask and placed it over his head—it was too quick for Kit’s mind to catch up with—then pressed a small button on the side of the desk.
From the ceiling, a thick grey smoke descended.
He tried not to breathe it in, but it was no use.
Even craving death, his body’s natural desire was to keep fighting—to keep breathing.
Kit inhaled.
And he stumbled against the bed.
The last thing he saw was the doctor’s eerie face, hidden by the gas mask.
Voices spoke softly around him. A faint melody of classical music flowed from somewhere, nearly lulling him back to sleep.
"Wake up, Kiton."
He opened his eyes. The room was dark. Everything was dark. The lack of light was a welcome reprieve from the constant white of the halls and rooms he’d been in.
Sabine stood by the examination table he was on. It cushioned him, keeping his head slightly elevated compared to the rest of his body. A white sheet was draped over his lower half, and straps fit over every inch of his skin. He was strapped so tightly, he couldn’t even move his prosthetic arm.
"What is this?" Kit’s eyes were the only part of his body that could move. He stared wildly at the dark room, noting the many doctors standing around as if this was a concert or play of some kind—and he was the main spectacle.
Sabine drew closer. She wore light blue scrubs. Her features tightened as she stared at him. "There is no greater hunter than one who feels for his prey—but there is no greater weapon than one that doesn’t feel at all."
Talor stepped forward, placing a hand on her shoulder. His hard brown eyes were accentuated by the scrubs, surgical cap, and face mask he wore.
"We’re going to take your love for your Soulbond and twist it into something unrecognizable," Talor said.
Kit’s breathing was ragged. "What do y-you mean?" Fear came at last, so heavy he almost passed out.
Sabine waved a hand to his body, stopping at his head. "We have to fix those emotions."
Something thick was fixed over his forehead, forcing his skull back against the table until he could no longer see Sabine or Talor—all he saw was the dark ceiling and the shadows of the doctors by his head.
"Those emotions," Sabine’s faceless voice echoed, "will only cloud your judgment. You are our Phoenix, risen from the ashes. Our weapon."
He strained against the bindings, but could not even manage to twitch his fingers; they were strapped down too. "I won’t be anyone’s weapon!" he roared.
There was no response.
The doctors continued to do things out of sight.
A faint whirr sounded. That was the only warning he got before pain ripped through his skull.
Kit screamed, the sound cracking against his broken, bruised, battered, corrupted body.
Oh, god. Please no—
Kit couldn’t think past the pain burning across his skull. Something cracked. He felt it in his body yet heard it echo around him.
Blood splattered the white sheet and ran down his temples, clinging to his lashes and dripping from the corners of his eyes like bloody tears.
Time stretched. The doctors rooted around in his brain with metal tools that scraped against his skull and prodded his insides. He trembled. They kept him awake to ensure they didn’t hit anything vital.
It was endless torture.
He screamed and screamed, and they never stopped him because they needed to know he still had the ability to scream and to feel pain.
"Emotions are a weakness, but pain is a necessity," Sabine said. "Pain is the one thing we need to survive."
So he was forced to feel it all.
Everything.
Rin’s face came in and out of focus. He kept the image of her in his head, even as they tugged and snipped in his brain, and suddenly…
He forgot…
What he was—
Thinking about.
Who was…
Rin?
No, Kit knew who Rin was. His Soulbond. His love. His reason for not tightening that noose around his throat and killing himself, for not bashing his head against the walls and letting death take him.
He focused on her face. Her laugh. The sound of it. Sweet and light. Rare.
The feel of her hands against his. The smell of her burnt lasagna. How her eyes would light up when she got excited.
Her taunts. Her coldly teasing jokes. Her protectiveness and determination.
Kit blocked out everything—except Rin.
When they took his happiness, he kept thinking of her.
Kit forgot the joy of the wind on his face or flying through the Stars. He knew he once loved it, but he couldn’t quite recall the way those things had made him feel.
And then, they took her from him, too.
"Please—not her," he cried.
They didn’t listen.
As thoughts of Rin’s laughter and light and sweetness evaporated, leaving him cold and numb, Kit was left with only rage and apathy. The memories of her were blurred and dark. Tainted. Like he was.
Love turned to obsession.
The dark forest brought a cold ripple of air and an innumerable collection of scents. Kit breathed it in, emotionless. The scent of pine suffused his lungs.
The auditory enhancers the doctors had infused into his eardrums elevated his hearing to new heights. Every rustle in the wind or faint call of the Rogues scraped against his skin and made the hair on his nape stand on end.
The other guards talked lowly.
Kit left their midst, staring intently into the darkness between the trees.
A few of the guards closest to him stilled, watching him warily. They knew he was a predator trapped in a man’s flesh.
Kit sensed things others could not.
A roar filled the night air. Weapons were at the ready.
"I thought you said the area was secure?" one of the guards asked, training the barrel of a rifle on the darkness.
"No Nova Zone is truly secure," answered General Tabitha Felwich, a stern woman who’d grown strangely preoccupied with the idea of Kit.
Tabitha often watched Kit when she thought he was unaware; he was always aware.
She’d tried to touch him once, when they were training. She hadn’t tried again since—after he’d snapped one of her finger bones clean in half. That hadn’t dulled her interest in him. She still watched.
Thundering footsteps shook in the distance. Kit readied himself. Just as the Rogue tore free from the forest, he lunged, gripping the Rogue with his hands.
The fingers of his prosthetic tightened, and the Rogue howled in pain. Blood oozed from the mangled wreckage of the Rogue in his grip, popping and cracking as organs were crushed from his strength. He released his hold.
It fell to the ground. Dead.
The other guards watched silently.
Kit paused as the wind carried a strange scent to him.
Fallen leaves crunched under his boots as he stepped closer to the towering side of the cliff that bordered the hangar entrance to the lab.
He breathed deeply.
It smelled like—
Cherries.
Something inside him perked up at the scent. A beast clawing at the bars of its cage.
The cold wash of apathy that held him in its icy grip let go, finger by finger, until he was left standing there, motionless. He was one second away from scouring the entirety of the vicinity until he found the source of that scent.